AEROELASTIC INVESTIGATION OF HINGELESS HELICOPTER ROTOR IN HOVER

Michael TODOROV1

Ivan DOBREV2

Fawaz MASSOUH2

Cvetelina VELKOVA1

michael.todorov@tu-sofia.bg ivan.dobrev@hotmail.com fawaz.massouh@ensam.eu tsveti@TF10109-1.tu-sofia.bg

Department of Aeronautics, Technical University of Sofia, Sofia -1000, BULGARIA
Laboratory of Fluids Mechanics, Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Paris-7513, FRANCE

An aeroelastic modelling of pattern hingeless helicopter rotor in hover is presented in this

paper. The coupled aeroelastic problem accounts for the mutual dependence between blade
structure and rotor aerodynamics. The aerodynamic model uses Blade Element Momentum
Theory (BEMT). BEMT gives good accuracy with respect to time cost. The structure model uses
Finite Element Method (FEM). The investigation is based on the well-known solvers MATLAB
and ANSYS. The obtained results show that the proposed modeling is efficient, rapid and gives
reliable results. This modelling is also useful and applicable for airplane propellers, wind
turbine rotors and airplane wings.
Key Words: helicopter, aeroelasticity, aerodynamics, structural dynamics
1. Introduction
Aerodynamic and inertia forces act on the
helicopter blade in flight. These forces deform the
helicopter blade and as a result, the aerodynamic
forces distribution changes. The new aerodynamic
forces distribution deforms the blade. In addition,
that changes the aerodynamic forces distribution
again. At a certain instant the aerodynamic and
inertia forces, and elasticity forces will be balanced.
Therefore the fully coupled aeroelastic problem
must account for the mutual dependence between
blade structure and aerodynamics.
The last years of researches have provided
significant successes in the prediction of airloads
on the helicopter rotors. These predictions are
based on a numerical approach, where the flow is
simulated using Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) tools with moving boundary conditions. The
computations normally include a comprehensive
rotor code, coupled to Euler or Navier-Stockes
solvers [Datta 2004, Servera 2002, Righi 2010].
The examples for a successful application of CFD
are the codes FLUENT, TURNS of NASA,
FLOWer of Deutshes Zentrum fr Luft und
Raumfahr, elsA and WAVES of ONERA [Servera
2002]. For aeroelastic calculations the CFD method
has to be very time consuming. Thus it can be
replaced by Blade Element Momentum Theory
(BEMT) or the vortex wake method which show a
good accuracy with respect to time cost [Leishman
2000]. In these methods, the helicopter blade is
divided into a number of independent elements

along the length of the blade. Each section of the

blade acts as quasi 2-D airfoil, which produces
aerodynamic forces and moments.
The structure of helicopter blade has been
modelled in different ways but mostly relies on a
modified beam model or one-dimensional finite
elements [Righi 2010].
The lumped-parameter approach is used to
determine the helicopter blade deformations under
the effects of aerodynamic and inertia forces. There
the continuous blade is presented by a number of
discrete segments, so that the partial differential
equations of blade deformations are replaced by a set
of simultaneous ordinary differential equations. The
methods using this approach are the HolzerMyklestad method [Bramwell 2001], collocation
method [Bielawa 1992] and Finite Element Method
(FEM) [Bielawa 1992, Floros 2000, Shen 2003]. The
FEM solvers as ANSYS, ABAQUS, NASTRAN and
ADAMS are often applied at the investigations of
helicopter rotor dynamics.
The advanced helicopter code called UMARC is
well validated and extensively used in the helicopter
rotor dynamics investigations. The rotor-fuselage
equations are formulated using Hamiltons principle
and are discretized using finite elements in space and
time. The blade airloads can be computed using
quasi-steady
aerodynamics,
linear
unsteady
aerodynamics or nonlinear unsteady aerodynamics
[Bir 1990, Freidmann].
Other successful helicopter code is CAMRAD.
The used model is a combination of structural,

inertial, and aerodynamic models. The rotor

aerodynamic model is based on free vortex method,
which takes in account the unsteady flow effects,
including a dynamic stall [Johnson 1988, Freidmann
2004].
The aim of this work is to present an aeroelastic
investigation of hingeless helicopter rotor. The
structural model uses FEM, and aerodynamic model
uses BEMT. The structural model relies on ANSYS
code, and aerodynamic model relies on MATLAB
code.
2. Structural model of a hingeless helicopter rotor
The advantage of hingeless rotor is its
mechanical simplicity. It eliminates the flapping and
lead/lag hinges by using an elastic element or elastic
blade to accommodate blade motion. But the design

of the blade in most cases is rather complicated. The

sketch of a hingeless rotor is shown in Fig.1.
An ANSYS code is used for the structural
analysis. The equivalent beam model of the
helicopter blade uses finite element BEAM44
(Table 1). The element has six degrees of freedom
at each node: translations in the nodal x, y, and z
directions and rotations about the nodal x, y, and zaxes. This element uses different asymmetrical
geometry without coinciding centre of gravity and
elastic centre. The blade is divided into 21 finite
elements, as shown in Table 1. The material of the
blade hub is Aluminum 7079, the elastic element is
from stainless steel AISI 304, and the blade is from
balsa. All necessary data are shown in Table 1. The
transient analysis solution method is used and
gyroscopic or Coriolis effects are included.

Fig. 1 Sketch of a pattern hingeless rotor

3. Loads on the helicopter blade
In hovering flight, the flow field is steady in
coordinate system which rotates with the rotor and
has rotational periodicity. This is the easiest flow
regime for mathematical modeling and analysis. The
blade element momentum theory (BEMT) gives the
basis of most analyses of rotor aerodynamics. When
its used a part of aeroelastic codes, this method is
very time efficient and gives good accuracy with
respect to time cost.
In this method, the helicopter blade is divided
into a number of independent elements along the
length of the blade. At each blade element, a force
balance is applied involving 2D blade section lift and
drag with the thrust and torque produced by the
element. At the same time, a balance of axial and
angular momentum is applied. The force balances
produce a set of non-linear equations which can be
solved numerically for each blade section. The
description follows [Leishman 2000].

Fig. 2 shows the incident velocities and

aerodynamic forces at a blade element on the
helicopter rotor.

Fig. 2 Incident velocities and aerodynamic forces at

a blade element

Table 1 Description of the structural helicopter rotor FEM model

Rotor sketch,
shown dimensions are in (mm)

Section properties:
Section area: A, m
Inertia moment about
axis, Ixx, m4
Inertia product, Ixz, m4
Inertia moment about
axis, Izz, m4
x coordinate of shear
about c.g., xsc, m
z coordinate of shear
about c.g., zsc, m
Finite element model:
Nodes: 1-21

A
0.45210-3
the x 0.16310-7

B
0.63610-4
0.32110-9

C
0.81010-4
0.54710-9

D
0.18010-5
0.60010-14

E
0.10610-3
0.12710-9

0.000
the y 0.16310-7

0.000
0.32110-9

0.000
0.54710-9

0.000
0.12210-10

0.000
0.12710-9

center 0.000

0.000

0.000

0.000

0.002

center 0.000

0.000

0.000

0.000

0.000

Elements: 1-21

Elements Type:
Material properties:
Elastic modulus, Ex, GPa
Elastic modulus, Ey, GPa
Elastic modulus, Ez, GPa
Shear modulus, Gxy, GPa
Shear modulus, Gxz, GPa
Shear modulus, Gyz, GPa
Density, , kg/m3

Elements: 1-3
Aluminum 7079,
isotropic material
71.7

BEAM 44
Element: 4
Stainless steel AISI 304,
isotropic material
190

26.9

79

2800

8000

As is shown in Fig.2, the resultant flow velocity

at each blade element at a radial distance y is
(1)

U U T2 U P2

where U T y and U P i . The induced angle of

attack (inflow angle) at the blade element is
(2)

U
tan P
UT
1

The averaged induced velocity is connected with the

inflow ratio

(3)

Elements: 5-21
Wood: Balsa,
orthotropic material
3.400
0.156
0.051
0.183
0.126
0.017
160

i
r
R

where r=y/R.
The effective angle of attack is
(4)

where is the pitch angle at the blade element.

When there is torsional elastic deformations of the
blade, e , the effective angle of attack is
(5)

The resultant lift dL and drag dD per unit span

on the blade element are
1
1
(6) dL U 2 cCl dy and dD U 2 cC d dy
2
2

the numerical solution to Eq.10. Convergence is

obtained in 3 or 4 iterations.
Finally the forces perpendicular and parallel to
the rotor disk are

where is the density of air, c is the local blade

chord, Cl and Cd are the lift and drag coefficients.
Based on steady linearized airfoil aerodynamics,
the local blade lift coefficient can be written as

(13)

dFz dL cos dD sin

(14)

dFx dL sin dD cos

C l C l ( 0 )

(7)

where Cl is the 2-D lift-curve-slope of airfoil

section, and 0 is the corresponding zero-lift angle.
The effects of compressibility corrects the lift-curveslope of each blade element according to Glauerts
rule

C l

(8)

C l

M 0.1

C l

The equilibrium of the blade depends by the

balance of aerodynamic and centrifugal forces. In
accordance with Fig. 3, a small element of the blade
of length dy is considered. The mass of this element
is mdy. The centrifugal force acting in a parallel
direction to the plane of rotation is
(15)

d ( FCF ) m 2 ydy

M 0.1

1 M 2

is the measured 2-D lift-curve-slope at

M=0.1. The local blade Mach number is

(9)

U T y

a
a

where a is the sonic velocity.

The inflow ratio is obtained by the use of
Prandtls tip-loss method

(10)

Cl
32 Fr
1

Cl
16 F

Fig. 3 Equilibrium of blade element aerodynamic

and centrifugal forces
Because the aerodynamic center and shear center
not coincident, reference to classical airfoil theory
gives the section moment dMx, as taken about shear
center, defined in Fig.4
(16)

dM x

1
U 2 cCl x SC dy
2

N bc
is the rotor solidity, and Nb is the
R
number of rotor blades. The Prandtls factor, F,
corrects the induced velocity

where

(11)

2
F cos 1 e f

and
(12)

Nb 1 r

2 r

Because F is a function of , the Eq.11 must be

solved iteratively. For first iteration F=1
(corresponding to an infinite number of blades) and
then finding F from Eq.11 and recalculating from

Fig.4 Section moment relevant geometry of a blade

element
The helicopter airfoil is NACA 0012. The airfoil
data for NACA 0012 are presented in [Sheldahl
1981]. The rotor angular velocity, , is 50 rad/s.
The blade chord is 0.032 m. The blade has not linear
twist. The blade pitch angle is 5o. The aerodynamic
loads are calculated by MATLAB code.

4. Numerical results
The algorithm of the coupling between the
structural model and aerodynamic model is:

1. The aerodynamic forces are computed for an

ideal rigid blade by MATLAB code;
2. The aerodynamic and inertia forces are applied
on the blade FEM-model by code ANSYS;
3. The linear and angular blade deformations are
computed by ANSYS code;
4. The new angle of attack for each element of the
blade is computed and new distribution of the
aerodynamic forces is received by MATLAB code
for second iteration;
5. The new aerodynamic and inertia forces are
applied on the FEM-model by ANSYS code;
6. The new linear and angular blade deformation
are calculated by ANSYS code;
7. The new distributions of the aerodynamic
forces and deformations are compared;
8. If they are changed more than a certain
tolerance: go to step 4;
9. The iteration is repeated while a convergence is
achieved.
The results are shown in Figs.5-8. Fig.5 shows
the vertical bending deformation and Fig.6 shows the
torsional deformation of the helicopter blade in the
nodes. The results are obtained by ANSYS code.
Fig.7 shows the lift distribution, and Fig.8 shows
drag distribution, as the results are obtained by
MATLAB code.
Five iterations of helicopter rotor are made while
a divergence has achieved. The drag influences
depends weakly from elastic properties of the blade
in hover. Consequently, it is necessary to render an
account of the blade elasticity at the calculations of
the helicopter rotor thrust, torque and power in
hover. In addition the aeroelastic effects will
influence on the strength calculations of rotor
sturcture.

Fig.6 The torsional deformation, e , in the nodes

Fig.7 The lift distribution, dL

Fig.8 The drag distribution, dD

Fig. 5 The bending vertical deformation, w, in the
nodes

Fig.9 shows the coning (flapping up) angle of

the helicopter rotor at the final iteration.

Fig. 9 Conning angle

5. Conclusion and future works

A simple aeroelastic modelling of pattern
helicopter hingeless rotor in hover, which uses wellknown solvers MATLAB and ANSYS, was
presented in this paper. The effective and fast
BEMT method was applied to create an
aerodynamic model. To analyse the aeroelastic
behaviour of helicopter rotor the FEM method is
used, as the blade was presented with equivalent
beam model. The results confirm that the
centrifugal forces are dominant and the coning
angle of the helicopter rotor remains small.
The future work provides for the aeroelastic
modelling to be made in forward flight. An
experiment in a wind tunnel will also provided for.
Acknowledgements
This study has been supported by Research and
Development Direction of Technical University of
Sofia (Grant 122PD0001-04/2012).
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